Letter to ?uest
June 19, 2009
Dear ?uest-
What’s up, my name is Stan Ipcus, and I am a 31 year old rapper from White Plains, New York. I am writing you because I am very interested in making a guest appearance at one of your upcoming Jam Sessions at Highline Ballroom, which would be my second on stage performance with you and your band. That’s right, I have performed with The Roots before. Don’t remember me? Well here’s my story.
That’s the ticket stub from the first time I ever saw The Roots live. It was August 1996. I had just graduated from White Plains High School, and was a couple weeks shy of heading off to college at the University of Maryland. A bunch of my boys and I drove down to the Knitting Factory from White Plains, excited to see your performance. We parked a block away, on the streeet behind the venue, and as we rounded the corner, we spotted you sitting in a car with someone listening to music, presumably songs from your upcoming album Illadelph Halflife. Fast-forward one minute, after saying what’s up to you quickly before you went inside, I found myself standing in front of The Knitting Factory, smoking blunts with Black Thought (one of my friends invited him into our cipher) in the midst of some sort of surreal hip hop moment. It was totally normal for him to join us now that I think back about it, but at the time it seemed pretty crazy. I mean, he was one of my favorite rappers! Still is.
The show itself was awesome. I was in the back, steadily smoking blunts like a healthy 18 year old white jewish kid from Westchester does when attending a rap concert, enjoying the set and the guest performances from Rahzel (who blew me away by beatboxing “Flava in your Ear”) and a then unknown Erykah Badu (who sang “Apple Tree” and maybe something else). Towards the end of the show, Black Thought began pulling people on stage to rap. My friend, the most outgoing of my crew who had initiated our pre-show blunt cipher with Black Thought, grabbed me up and we made our way to the front of the stage. My friend started yelling to Black Thought to let me come up and rap. Well he must have remembered us from outside, because he started chuckling and pulled me on stage and gave me the microphone.
Yo, word up, I still remember the rhyme I spit that night. It was the first thing that popped into my head, about battling some kid at a pool hall. And I’m pretty sure I ripped it too, because when I hopped off stage, everyone was giving me pounds and high fives like I just hit a home run at Yankee Stadium. And Black Thought gave me my props too. It was the highlight of my life at that point. Rapping on stage with my favorite band. It was my first real hip hop performance. Here’s the rap:
”Yo I was coolin’ shootin’ pool with my man K-Wet,
when this fella walked up in the spot trying to set,
me off, saying i was soft with no skills,
had to let this sucker know that Ipcus gets ill,
with the best, east to west you try to test
the kid with the S on his chest there’s no contest,
he set it off with a freestyle rhyme,
give me room son cuz you can’t hang with mine,
cuz i got bangin lines but this kid had ones too
the more rhymes we kicked the more the crowd grew,
so i flipped a little rap just to get the crowd going,
he flipped one back doo doo with his flowing,
got me open, kicked another rap now he’s sweatin,
yo stan ip’s tongue is like a loaded weapon,
spittin rhyme in all direction i had this kid dizzy,
it wasn’t hard to see that ipcus was gettin busy,
but he struck back but fuck that i’m in the zone,
retaliated off the dome and sent the bitch rapper home.”
Since then, I’ve seen The Roots many times live. I saw you on the Smokin’ Grooves tour less than a week after that Knitting Factory show, and someone actually recognized me on the lawn and came up to give me respect for my performance with you guys. That completely blew my mind. It was the first time I was recognized like that. And I’ve seen you in many other spots too, and even had the pleasure of handing one of my tapes off to you after a show at Villanova University when I was still a freshman in college. Plus, I’ve seen you at Wetlands, Roseland Ballroom, and some other places too. All were amazing shows.
And I’ve done my own shows too. I’ve had quite a little rap career for an unsigned artist. Yeah, I work full time directing youth after school programs and summer camps, and always have, but still managed to compile a stack of hip hop highlights. I’ve opened up shows for Mos Def, Slick Rick, and Smif n Wessun (ironically the Smif N Wessun show was at The Knitting Factory). I’ve performed all over NYC and across the country at huge venues with my buddy Matisyahu (I’m on his Grammy nominated Youth album song “WP”), including Madison Square Garden and the Greek Theater in Los Angeles. And I’ve had my songs played and have appeared live on Hot 97, Shade 45, and The Halftime Show on WNYU. Plus, I get lots of exposure on Nahright.com, which is thrilling for me as an unsigned artist.
I would love the opportunity to re-live my first performance with The Roots and make a guest appearance with you at one of your next Jam Sessions. I’ve come a long way since that night in 1996. And I’ve got the two perfect songs to perform that I think you will dig. ”Wifey Material”, which our mutual friend Peter Rosenberg debuted on his Hot 97 Real Late show, and “My Ferris Buellers”, which is my most well known song (my video for it was the first thing Nahright ever posted of mine and it was the first song I ever had played on Hot 97 thanks to Cipha Sounds). And of course I would be open to just coming out and getting busy also. Whatever you feel fits best. Please consider me for your next lineup of guest performers. I’m ready when you are. Check out “Wifey Material” below, as well as my homemade video for “My Ferris Buellers”. Thanks for your time, and I hope to hear back from you soon.
peace,
ip
(914) 837 2743
www.westcheddar.com
www.stanip.com
www.myspace.com/stanipcus
www.twitter.com/stanipcus
www.facebook.com/stanipcus
River Ciphers
June 18, 2009
For background info on the event CLICK HERE. Hope to see you at the first cipher. Come through and represent!!!!
*UPDATE*
THIS EVENT WAS POSTPONED DUE TO A SCHEDULING CONFLICT.
STAY TUNED FOR NEW DATE AND MORE INFO!!!!!
Hawaii Honeymoon
May 6, 2009
I’m back baby. Back to Westcheddar, back to the daily grind. My wife and I had an amazing trip to Kauai, with stops in Southern and Northern California. It was the time of my life. My wife (I love saying that it’s so fun) took the picture above from our hotel lagoon early in the morning on our first day at the Grand Hyatt Kauai. She got real “snap happy” (she coined that) on the trip. She’s a pretty good photographer huh? Me, well I did a lot of reading (I’ll get to that in my next post) and also managed to write a few tropical bars by the pool. So while MY WIFE was in the shower getting ready for dinner one night, I took the opportunity to recite them while I had the mean island backdrop in effect. Check the video that I call “Book of Rhymes: Hawaii Honeymoon Pages”…
And would you believe, when we got back to New York, I was surfing the net for what I missed in the music world while we were away, and I stumble across the new Kanye West “Amazing” video that coincidently was shot in Kauai!!! I mean, he’s got footage of himself at the Waimea Canyon on blast through the whole video, and I’m like, “Babe, we were just there!!!” Peep the pic, then the video…truly AMAZING.
I’ll leave you with another impressive shot that my wife took from our table at the Beach House restaurant on the south shore near our hotel (it was her birthday!!!), and one of us too from the same night. Stay tuned for more posts…peace and love.
My Book of Rhymes Part 1
July 7, 2008
I found this in one of my many old notebooks of raps sometime last year. I wrote this in the spring of 2004 during a four month stay in my old bedroom on Ogden Avenue. I was working at White Plains High School as a substitute teacher by day and recording in NYC at Sony Studios by night, fresh from a seven year stint on my own in Maryland and D.C., now at home sharing a bathroom with my Mom and Dad. Of the millions of bars that I’ve written in my life, these are my 16 favorite.
It was my most personal, meaningful, and lyrical verse long before it ever ended up on the Matisyahu song “WP”, and that’s the truth jack. In fact, I spit this verse on stage with Matis in November 2004 at SUNY Purchase, about eight months before “WP” was recorded. Matis saw me in the back of the audience (he didn’t know I was coming to the show), and he motioned for me to come up on stage to spit something. And I spit this verse that I had been listening to in my head for months.
He didn’t know it at the time, but he indirectly inspired this verse. It was about us, our experiences growing up in White Plains, all the nostalgic thoughts I was having at the time, working at my old high school and living in my old digs. I loved the verse for so many reasons, but mostly because I felt it so accurately represented me and how I felt as young guy growing up in the NY suburbs. AND THE LYRICS ARE SICK. Peep the alliterations kid. MISTY MORNING AND MY MOMS A MESS. I knew the second I wrote the first line that this verse would be perfect for those special kosher Matis moments where a rap about blunts and tits was not gonna fly.
Well the verse must have resonated with Matis, because in July 2005 when he was working on the YOUTH album, he called me up and said “remember that verse you kicked…?” No one ever heard it before that night at SUNY Purchase, but thanks to Matisyahu and Epic Records, this verse is now immortal.
My “WP” verse, live from the SPAC in Saratoga Springs, NY, with Matisyahu on the 311 Summer Unity Tour, July 2007.
